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This brings us to a question I wanted to ask: Given that a lot of rock is missing from this period, how likely is it that the abruptness of the Cambrian explosi
by mannykannot 5y ago
This brings us to a question I wanted to ask: Given that a lot of rock is missing from this period, how likely is it that the abruptness of the Cambrian explosion is an artifact of missing evidence? How likely is it that we would even recognize a distinct Cambrian period, if four-fifths of the Cambrian rocks were missing?
- cbkeller 5y agoAh, good questions. Although we are missing a lot of rock, paleontologists have spent a lot of time looking through the non-missing parts. So far, they have found a lot of really interesting things, such as the macroscopic soft-bodied fossils of the Ediacaran biota [1], but even so there's really very little in the way of shelly fossils until the Cambrian, and their appearance really does seem to be quite sudden as far as we can tell! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota